the justice department releasing a legal opinion today supporting the treasury secretary s refusal to turn over six years of president trump s tax returns to the house ways and means committee. let s talk about this now with evan perez and elie honig. so good to have both of you on. evan, i m going to start with you. so we had this legal opinion. what is the doj arguing here? well, don, the justice department is arguing that richard neal, the chairman of the house and ways and means committee and the democrats are essentially lying when they say that they need access to the president s six years of the president s personal and business tax returns in order to perhaps look at passing a law about auditing a president. let me read from the opinion that steve engle released today. it says in part the committee s stated purpose in the april 3rd letter blinks reality. it s pretextual.
the justice department releasing a legal opinion today supporting the treasury secretary s refusal to turn over six years of president trump s tax returns to the house ways and means committee. let s talk about this now with evan perez and elie honig. so good to have both of you on. evan, i m going to start with you. so we had this legal opinion. what is the doj arguing here? well, don, the justice department is arguing that richard neal, the chairman of the house and ways and means committee and the democrats are essentially lying when they say that they need access to the president s six years of the president s personal and business tax returns in order to perhaps look at passing a law about auditing a president. let me read from the opinion that steve engle released today. it says in part the committee s stated purpose in the april 3rd letter blinks reality. it s pretextual. no one could reasonably believe that the committee seeks six years of the president s tax
motives. exactly. and doj called chairman neal s proposals auditing of presidential candidates, he calls that pretextual, the justice department does, pointing to a bunch of statements from other democrats who said they need trump s tax return for a variety of reasons, like looking at financial health, which has nothing to do with enforcing finance tax laws. we knew the justice department was going to weigh in and we were going to see it. what s the next step for democrats here? the justice department also doesn t have the last word here. this isn t a legally binding opinion it s just their argument and so chairman neal so far hasn t made any moves to get his subpoenas enforced in course but that s where all of this is headed in all reality and so today s opinion from the justice department just shows how aggressive of a stance this administration probably plans to take to keep those tax returns under wraps, john. no filing yet, this isn t in
candidates and the president himself, he called all of that pretextual, the justice department does, pointing to a bunch of states from other democrats who said they need trump s tax returns for a variety of reasons like looking at his financial health, which clearly have nothing to do with enforcing federal tax laws. i know it wasn t a surprise. we knew the justice department was going to weigh in and we were going to see it. i guess my question is what is the next step for the democrats here? well, the justice department also doesn t have the last word here. this isn t a legally binding opinion. it is just their argument. so chairman neal so far has not made any moves to get his subpoenas enforced in court but that s where it is all headed in all reality. today s opinion from the justice department just shows how aggressive a stance this administration probably plans to take to keep those tax returns under wraps, john. but no filing yet? this isn t in a courtroom waiting to be
fashion. there is nothing more serious than an attack on democracy. ellen weintraub from the fec which does great work. the campaign finance laws are under assault left and right. thank you very much. thank you, chris. joining me now is richard blumenthal from connecticut and he introduced law about assistance from foreign governments. objections from your colleagues like marcia blackburn moving forward yesterday. susan collins expressing her worry that you don t distinguish between them. is that pretextual or good faith? it s pretextual. there is no good faith objection for objecting to a law that makes crystal clear that there is a duty to report this federal felony as ellen said quite well. there is no question, no ambiguity in the law that